In 1958 our family took a cross country camping trip. I decided to make the slides we took into a DVD as a 50th aniversary project, to be accompanied by the 1958 music that we listened to as we drove across the country. That music included Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and the Big Bopper - and in organizing it I decided to look into the famous airplane crash immortalized in American Pie. This led to many sites discussing AMERICAN PIE, and I think yours is the most complete and most meaningful. Thanks so much. I have decided that the right name for my little slide show is American Pie. The nostaligia we feel for the 50's keeps us hoping for a better tomorrow.

I'm nearly 60 yrs old. I grew up in the 50s, was a teen in the radical and violent 60s and a young adult trying to find myself in the 70s. I lived this song. You can study the Countercultural movement and its affects on America's society and politics. But through all the turmoil and change, one thing held us together - music. Oh yea, music evolved right along with everything else. But it was the one common factor of the 60s and 70s that held us together. We were right about peace and love. Wrong about drugs. Separated on points of view expressed by organized units (Blackpanthers, etc.) But we all loved the music! Thank you to Don McLean for putting it so eloquently in "American Pie" and thank you to you for your interpretation and education.

I only wanted to read the lyrics to the song when I Googled "American Pie" on my computer. But to read the author's interpretation of those lyrics was truly fascinating: it is a well thought out and an exceptionally well written article.

Kudos.

December 12th 2007 02:18:06 PM

What is your name?

Jane

How did you find this Web Site?

Google

Where are you from?

NJ

Do you have any comments?

I have always loved this song and have heard some of the rumors over the years, but it was fascinating to read an in depth interpretation of the song. I looked it up in the first place because my 12 year old son was asking what it was about after hearing the song on the radio. This song truly transcends generations.

I looked up your website to check on the words and whatever meaning I hadn't gleaned over the years. It is a small thing, but you have two words wrong. First, Lennon read a book ON Marx, not a book of Marx. Second, in verse 5, the flames climbed high into the night to LIGHT the sacrificial light, not to moonlight the sacrificial light. Anyhow, I loved your interpretation, which illuminated several places in the song for me, and I enjoyed the whole website. But please excuse my ignorance, who was the Big Bopper?
Thanks again, Elaine

As I read your interpretation of the 3rd verse, I felt that you reached a bit to try to make it fit the music as metaphor theme. It was obvious to me that the King and Queen referred to Jack and Jackie Kennedy and the days of "Camelot". They were renowned as American Royalty. I was pleased to see that you later mentioned this alternative interpretation. It appears that the "jester" actually has a dual meaning as does most everything in this song. In the first use, the jester is obviously Bob Dylan, as you suggest, with his James Dean coat. Singing for the King and Queen could be singing for the social causes that the Kennedy era came to represent. Dylan's singing for social conscience was singing for the King and Queen's causes.

In the next section, the jester becomes Lee Harvey Oswald, in whom Bob Dylan later claimed to see something of himself (and of every man). Anyone who has studied anything of Oswald's character and personality could see how he could be portrayed as a paranoid jester type. The younger Dylan of the early 60's and Oswald even looked quite a bit alike, which was probably not lost on McLean. The death of Kennedy was a monumentally horrific event and would have profoundly affected McLean to the extent that he would have had to mention it in this, his most important work. Some argue that the song is about the death of music from McLean's perspective, but that is too easy in my opinion. It seems to me he is saying that America herself is dying and it all started with the death of Holly, Valens and the Big Bopper and the death of true rock-n-roll music along with them. McLean sees the musical vacuum created by their deaths as so significant that it changed not just music, but American society, politics and history.

Those are just some thoughts I had after reading your work and pondering on the lyrics for myself for a while. Thanks for making me think! Great work!!

The intreptation of the chours in american pie could have some relavance but...the real meaning is "so bye bye miss american pie, drove my chevy to the levee but the levee was dry them good old boys were drinking whisky and rye sing this will be the day that i die.." now don Mclean was from the City of New Rochelle and my Father who went to the same college as him knew him and was friends with him the Levee was a bar on north avenue now know as the Beechmont pub right next to the firehouse on the intersection of eastchester rd and north ave the good old boy were his friends whose favorite kind of whisly was one distilled from at least 51% of rye and 49% corn forgot the name, that is the "true" meaning of those lines.

July 27th 2007 07:42:24 AM

What is your name?

Paul

How did you find this Web Site?

Googled it

Where are you from?

Albuquerque

Do you have any comments?

After transfering my late 60 and 70s reel to reels to cd, I am enjoying American Pie again. The strangest part to me is that American Pie is better, clearer, more emotional now that it was "then". So "American Pie" to me has really become the best song because it was a retrospective of the fifties and now becomes a retrospective of we who lived, along with Don Mclean, through the era. I liked the song then, but now, I love it. It's the best song of today, and maybe of all time. I felt more "understanding" of the lyrics and the song as a whole, than ever before. Thank you for the lyrical perspective to clear up a few details. I think the best part of American Pie is we all can relate to it with our own unique perspective. Buddy Holly lives in 2007! Thanks again.

Fascinating. I want to read the books you reference, being that I am 29 years old and have no personal reference to the 50s and 60s. I have read a lot of Hunter Thompson on the death of the American Dream, and it seems to me that while the good Doctor largely blames Nixon and Vietnam for ruining the party, Maclean blames the freaks for bucking a system that was working good enough for him and most of America. The real solution must have lied somewhere in between, as it is now 2007, and things are still screwed up, eh? We couldn't sit back and turn a blind eye to social problems as we danced away at the sock hop, yet getting stoned and setting everything on fire didn't seem to work either...

I've often wondered if there was any real meaning to the song beyond the wistful reference to Buddy Holly. Your excellent analysis has opened my eyes to events in the sixties I'd never heard of (The Stones concert at the end of the decade for example) and given me a greater understanding of an important era for the Western world. Fascinating.

May 23rd 2007 03:31:04 AM

What is your name?

Vanesa

How did you find this Web Site?

google

Where are you from?

Madrid (Spain)

Do you have any comments?

This is the most brilliant interpretation I´ve ever seen. I love the song and I´ve always wondered about its meaning but now I really understand what the author wanted to say and how he felt. Understanding America and its past is easier now...
Thanks a lot!!!

Jim, I was fascinated by your interpretation of American Pie. I was listening to the song on the way home from work, and was wondering about all the allegories inherent in the lyrics. So, I found your website and read ALL the web pages with great interest. You have tremendous insight and are very eloquent. Your referenced authors were also fascinating reading. Thank you for shedding light on a truly amazing work of art and a part of history in its own right.

I used to play this song a lot on my guitar but never had all the words. I just heard it again on iTunes radio (Folk Alley) and thought to look it up on the web to surely find the words. I recently bought another guitar after having sold my others a couple of years ago...it will be my first order of business now.

I am a child of the 50's having graduated high school in 1959. The world and country was so much more sane then. How I wish we could have those days again...except with computers and the web,lol.

Wondering: When the author refers to the West Coast, could this be any reference to the Beach Boys? I'm not sure where the Beach Boys figure throughout the period, but they certainly don't have a focus on the "establishment", etc. I was thinking of the Music style shifting toward CA (as you mentioned in your interpretation).